


In The Shelter Of Each Other

by Razzaroo



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 02:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18043589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: The Dragonborn is lost and finds home again





	In The Shelter Of Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from an old Irish saying: "It is in the shelter of each other that the people live." Don't take my word for it, I heard it from Pádraig Ó Tuama on BBC Radio 4.

Jergen had once said that the Dragonborn was someone who dragons would speak to; that had been a long time ago, during the dark sleeplessness of winter, when dragons and their souls the people born with them were bedtime stories.

Vilkas met the Dragonborn, coming out of the cold into Jorrvaskr, just as any mortal did; he meets a dragon when it lands on top of him.

He sees it at a distance first, dream-shape of it, shadow from the mountain. His heart jumps to his throat as it comes closer, flash of white wings, ripple of red scales, a long tongue that spoke fire. He stumbles as it lands, unbalanced by the rush of wind from its wings, choking on the smell of smoke and sulphur. Its eye pins him down, dark and ancient, and a voice rumbles in its chest as Vilkas reaches for his fallen sword.

“ _Fahdon,_ ” the dragon says, and Vilkas feels the word reverberate in his bones. He steps back and the dragon blinks, “ _Dovahkiin.”_

Vilkas wants to say “ _You have the wrong person”_ because his soul is not the stuff of legends, but the words stick in the back of his throat and choke him; he feels four years old and afraid of shadows on the wall, five years old and only safe in Jergen’s arms. He doesn’t know how anyone or anything could confuse him for Nerissa. The dragon’s gaze is crushing.

“Vilkas.”

Nerissa’s voice comes as a wind-torn thing and the dragon’s head lowers further, jaw resting on the ground. Vilkas only shakes himself out of the dragon’s gaze when Nerissa reaches for him from where’s she’d been clinging to the dragon’s neck. He holds her against his chest, bones bundled like firewood, and leans to shelter her as the dragon’s wings drag back and it takes off. Nerissa watches it go with something like envy. If the dragon had been too hot, she is cold, like ice where she wraps herself around Vilkas.

“What happened?” he asks, and Nerissa’s grip tightens on him. She presses her face into his neck.

“I fought Alduin,” she says, too easily, as if World Eaters are only easily dealt with pests, “And I didn’t know where to go next.”

“So you found me.”

“Yes.” She lifts her head, “Vilkas?”

“Hm.”

“I think I died.”

 

* * *

 

It’s nothing new for Vilkas to have every inch of his space occupied by someone else. He and Farkas had been living in the shelter of each other since before they’d been born; his childhood had been spent under Jergen’s arm, safely standing in his shadow. Nerissa has more angles than Farkas ever had, but she holds on to him the same way, all clutching fingers and desperate need for closeness. She complains of cold, holds on to him because of the heat that builds beneath his skin as the full moon approaches.

“There’s a scholar in Cyrodiil,” he says, “who calls it a Hircine fever. It’s not natural.”

“I don’t care what a scholar in Cyrodiil thinks,” Nerissa says, “There’s a lot that isn’t natural. You’re you, and you’re safe.” Her fingers curl in tighter and her nails bruise, “I’ll fix you, Vilkas. Soon as I can face the living again, I’ll get you your witch’s head.”

He believes her, honest thing curled up like a cat against him, kneading his rib cage. He could feel the angle of her nose against his shoulder, nails harsh, sharp rise of her ankle somewhere south of his knee. She feels like she’s lying on a knife’s edge.

“Vilkas?” she says.

“Hm?” he says back, then finds his words again when he realises how much he sounds like Farkas, “What?”

The kneading stops and she unwinds herself from around him, looks at him with narrow eyes the colour of the moon. Dragonborn she might be, but she was made to be Hircine’s creature.

“Did I tell you I saw Kodlak?”

For a moment, he only stares at her, all milk white eyes and too long teeth and the silvery crescent of a scar on shoulder where her shirt has slipped. He wants to ask about Skjor, about Eir, about Jergen, but of course Sovngarde’s gates are always closed to them. He doesn’t know what to ask about the place he’d feared would be out of his reach.

“You said you’d help him,” he says, twinge of guilt over his own weakness. He’d failed Kodlak twice over, “I didn’t doubt you.”

A shaft of shallow moonlight cuts across Nerissa’s face, across the scars that mar her cheek, “You did before.”

“I doubt everyone I don’t know. You weren’t special.” Vilkas turns his face away, “I don’t want to talk about Kodlak.”

He expects her to push but she doesn’t, still too bone weary. Instead, she lies beside him again, curled up tighter in herself, head resting over his heartbeat. If not for her breathing, her sleep would be as still and rigid as death.

 

* * *

 

Nerissa’s safe haven is a hunting lodge in the woods, little two room place surrounded by a garden overgrown with wildflowers. She sits on a wooden stool, looking like a shallow imitation of herself, and watches him. There’s something ashy about her, burnt out, a fire at the heart of her extinguished or abandoned. She never lasts long in the sun, always shies from it and retreats back inside, drawing herself back into the safe nest she’s made for herself.

“We’ll need to go back,” Vilkas says, when he feels her gaze has bored two holes between his shoulders, “To civilisation. And Jorrvaskr.”

Nerissa shrivels, “Oh, no, I can’t do that. People will want so much of me and I won’t know what to give them.” She looks down, at her thin brown hands, “It’s best I stay here, and learn to be what I am.”

“You’ve done that. You’re the Dragonborn.” He frowns, “No one would expect anything in Jorrvaskr.”

“That’s the first place people would think to look for me. I don’t want anyone to come.”

 _Who could come?_ Vilkas wants to ask _Who could find you here?_ But he remembers that she’d found him, in the middle of nowhere, and landed a dragon on his head.

“You don’t have to stay,” she says, already moving to withdraw back into the shadows, “You can go home, if you want.”

Once, when Vilkas had been younger and brasher and swallowed up by grief, the loss of Jergen looming larger than the rest of the world, he had found himself in the forest. Farkas had followed him and had never left his side, last solid thing in the world. They’d mourned and moved through the world and only gone back when they were ready.

It is, says the voice in his head that sounds like Farkas, a process of mourning that keeps Nerissa in the woods; her eyes search the sky for something lost. Vilkas would be unworthy of his brother if he abandons her now.

“I’ll stay,” he says and Nerissa pauses folding herself back from the world.

“Oh.” Her smile makes the first hint of a reappearance, “I think that would be good for you.”

 

* * *

 

The moon sits full and radiant, emboldened by the solstice, beams down on the world; Vilkas glares back, the milky light as irritating as silver, pacing a track in the floor. Nerissa follows him, bare feet pattering, trailing sheets. The air is heavy with summer and the smell of wild things.

“How long has it been so bad?” she asks, and when he doesn’t answer, she says, “You could run it out. I’ll come with you.”

Vilkas shakes his head, determined to see his word to the end. He feels like his bones are trying to push through his skin. Nerissa takes hold of his arm and pulls him outside. They stand together, backs to the moon, and she asks him to tell her about the stars.

“You already know them,” he says, “You followed them.”

“I can read them. And I know what my parents told me. I want to know what _you_ were told. Besides, you said I should come to you with questions.”

“Jergen…read omens in them. And in tea leaves.”

“And were they honest with him?”

They lapse into quiet, the only sounds being the wind through the trees and Nerissa, breathing for the two of them, solid and real and grounding.

“They were, sometimes,” Vilkas says eventually, “But I don’t trust them. I only trust things I can touch.”

“Ah,” Nerissa says and she looks at her hands, at the small scars left on her palms by the dragon’s scales, “Clever boy.”

 

* * *

 

Piece by piece, day by day, Nerissa comes back into the world. She starts among her flowers, creeping among the plants, and it’s Vilkas’s turn to watch as she gathers bundles of leaves and flower heads. For luck, she says about one; for health, about another; to say sorry, for the last.

“Sorry for what?” he asks and Nerissa straightens her back.

“For disappearing. It’s only fair.” She twists, balancing on the balls of her feet. She spots the tree, old dead thing, that Vilkas has near hacked to pieces with his sword drills. She chews on her bottom lip, “I think we’ve been away from home long enough.” She looks back to him and there’s a definite dip to her ears, “I’m sorry to have kept you away so long.”

“You didn’t,” Vilkas says, though he wouldn’t miss it, this place of rest, surrounded by trees that are starting to feel like bars, “I chose to stay.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a relief to be back in Jorrvaskr, behind its familiar walls and among people Vilkas knows better than he knows himself. Despite everything, despite the empty spot in the Harbinger’s seat, despite the hollow left by Skjor, returning is a well worn pattern; Vilkas takes his place as master-at-arms, as Farkas’s other half, as if he’d never left. Nerissa finds her balance again.

“Where have you been?” Aela asks, and she prods Nerissa more than she does Vilkas, because she already knows his habits.

“In the woods,” Nerissa says, and she weaves her dried flower stems into a chain, “I’m a wood elf. It’s what we do sometimes.” She hesitates, “And I knew that if I came straight back to here, to people, I’d have to deal with jarls and queens and too many questions.” She shudders, “They might still come.”

Farkas snorts, “Like to see ‘em try.”

It’s a small thing but it affirms that sense of home and safety, backs up Vilkas’s gut feeling that this is the best place for them both. The Companions can’t offer endless sky or sulphur on the tongue or shouts that pull the world asunder but what they offer is nothing less; it’s home and family, a place to lick wounds and injured pride, to rebuild and face the world again.

 

* * *

 

Time ticks further on. Nerissa faces the jarls but turns down any offers to weigh in on the choosing of a new ruler; the Companions, she says with respect, do not involve themselves in politics. She takes up a corner of the hall and writes to her Onmund, her long unseen mage, and asks him to come down from the frozen hills of Winterhold to Whiterun’s summer pastures. She takes the work Farkas suggests and vanishes for days, longer than she should; reports of a dragon filter their way to Whiterun, one with red scales and white wings, casting his shadow over the meadows and forests. Vilkas can only picture her clinging to the dragon’s neck, her soul indulging in its birthright.

But she always comes back, always with stories. She takes him with her more and more, trusts him at her back, keeps her promise to break the curse on him. They find a way to make the world fit them again.

And they live in the shelter of each other.


End file.
